948Re: [steiner] introduction

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Ashley Case

Jun 17, 2002

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Thanks, Carl. I do appreciate hearing the male
perspective. I hope that you are back on your feet now, 18 months
later. It made me sad to hear that you were working on a common
goal, and this drove you apart.

You remind me of all the reasons
why I've loved the Steiner people in my life. As a community
of spiritual friends I've always found them frank , wholesome, open,
inspiring, gentle yet passionate, and almost always uplifting
to be around - both your posts left me with a smile and made me think
- and even more amazingly got me to post instead of lurk!

Your situation, Ashley, has
*some* similarities to my own, except that, being male, a few of the
perspectives are a little different. I was haunted by
your description of the "spark" going out of your relationship -
about 18 months ago the same thing led to the break-up of me and my
de-facto, Gail, of five years. There is a particular
type of sadness when a relationship that was full of life
and vitality quietly ebbs away to nothingness.

I identify with some of
both you and your husbands situation. Perhaps my situation
might add another angle of view on his. Like him I was in a
pressured job - I was a sales manager and had to do a lot of
international travel. I too would come home a sit in front of
the TV. I found the corporate world sufficiently stressful
that I needed to mentally "anaesthetize" myself to recouperate enough
to face the next day and the TV was just right for the job - it seemed
less harmful than drinking. We had talked
about putting in a few very hard working years to get ourselves into
a financially secure position and I think I was mentally
prepared to "tough it out" for that long - but over about 2 years of this
we became distant and started to fight. It seemed that one of the
essential problems was that in a stressful job it is MUCH harder to find
the time and energy for romance and passion - previously I'd put a lot
more energy focussing on her and making her feel special and loved and
making her laugh - now I had transferred that energy into our mutual goal
of achieving financial security. Perhaps the old saying
"you marry the job too" applies both in your situation and
mine. I always found that when she expressed fear and concern
about security issues, particularly about money, I would react by
putting in even longer hours at work to try and "do something" to fix the
cause of the insecurity. It is a perhaps part of the male protective
instinct that when your mate feels insecure then all other matters become
secondary until you restore that sense of security. I
wonder if any of that happens with you and your husband.

Looking back on the
situation with hindsight I guess I needed either a job that was compatable
with my wife, or a wife that was compatable with my job.

The issue of romance and passion
is one I strive to understand more than I do - particularly from a
spiritual point of view. Steiner embraced both Christianity and
Buddhism - and I was educated in a Waldorf school and later become a
serious Buddhist for several years. But it seems to me that there
are quite different views on an issue like Passion between Christianity
and Buddhism and I don't as yet know if and how Steiner resolves
these. Buddha taught that passion is a manifestation of
craving and craving leads to suffering and blocks the path the Nirvana. He
taught that we should be aware of passions arising within us without
reacting to them so that the passions lose power and dissapate. I
remember attending a 10-day meditation course and at the end of each day
people would ask the teacher questions. One day a woman came up and
asked what the problem was with passion and the teacher answered more
or less as above, to which she replied "but I LIKE it!" It
really stuck in my mind that on some level passion matters a bit
more to women than to men - in that setting passion was look at as not
really different to anger or envy - and you certainly wouldnt have seen
any of the meditators get up and make a stand for envy or anger the way
this woman did for passion. On some level it seems like
passion is largely an energy that flows from men to women - it leaves
women feeling more energized but their men feeling less
so. From Christs owns "passion" we get an entirely different view -
at golgotha passion seems to be an essential part of his spiritual
transcendance. And the "mainstream" modern western view is that passion is
a very positive thing. The truth about passion is, I suspect, one of
the deeper mysteries.

What a deliciously self-indulgent excercise, to consider your
list of questions! My IRL housewife friends *bristle* at the
mention of my marital and personal problems. I have attached
my answers in a MS Word document. Thanks again,
Christine! I look forward to knowing you better on this
list.

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